Romania's Schengen Accession Is Historic Success

Younger generations need to know where we started from. When I arrived at the Hungarian embassy in Bucharest, a good ten years ago, the advanced state of negotiations suggested that Romania was likely to be admitted to the Schengen area during my four years of diplomatic service. This did not happen, as the Netherlands and Austria blocked accession for a long time, citing corruption and shortcomings in the judiciary; later, Austria's government added the increase in illegal migration to the list of these partly justified objections.